


The Storms They Don't Prepare You For

by allonsy_gabriel



Series: The Other 51 [13]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angry at Society, But Like Poetic Rants, Essays, Extended Metaphors, Hopeful Ending, I Don't Even Know, I Just Lived Through Another Tornado, I guess???, Let's Overthrow the Government!, Pretentious, Rants, Sad with a Happy Ending, Storms, Tornadoes, Wow, this was the result
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 13:58:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10992348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allonsy_gabriel/pseuds/allonsy_gabriel
Summary: For as long as I can remember, the threat of storms has loomed over my head. The notion that everything you love and hold dear could be blown away in one night, sucked up and tossed about by a swirling funnel of destruction, is familiar to me.Occupational hazard of living in Oklahoma, I suppose.





	The Storms They Don't Prepare You For

**Author's Note:**

> Gabe, back at it again with the angry, semi-political writing. I'm sorry. I'm literally publishing everything I write in an attempt to finish this Other 51 Challenge.

For as long as I can remember, the threat of storms has loomed over my head. The notion that everything you love and hold dear could be blown away in one night, sucked up and tossed about by a swirling funnel of destruction, is familiar to me.

 

Occupational hazard of living in Oklahoma, I suppose.

 

There are storms, however, that I was never prepared for. In all my school drills that taught me to crouch under my desk, in every lesson we did that said to avoid windows and exterior walls, we never learned how to handle storms such as the ones we’re going through now.

 

Hatred. Prejudice. Discrimination. Alienation. Vilification.

 

Like the tornadoes that I’ve grown up with, these ransack life in a matter of moments, and yet takes months or even years to recover from. And like tornadoes, I feel powerless to stop them as they tear through the things and people I love.

 

I watch as the ones closest to my heart turn on each other, or on total strangers, for things they cannot control.

 

Shouting like thunder, glares like lightning, a few simple, rashly chosen words to be the winds turning around each other, the hot and the cold chasing one another in circles of vicious opinions until the twister forms.

 

The rainstorm of tears afterward. The debris of relationships scattered for miles.

 

There is no storm shelter from anger. There is no cellar to hide you from bigotry. You can’t curl into a ball in the bathtub and escape the worst of humanity.

 

You can try, but it won’t get you anywhere.

 

So what do you do as you face the twister? Do you stand there and let yourself be picked up and thrown through the air like Dorothy’s house in the Wizard of Oz? Do you turn and run and run and run and run until everything you love is but a speck in the distance? Do you hunker down and try and wait for it to blow over, only to find the things you adore destroyed and piled into a mound of rubbish and broken memories?

 

It seems these are our only options. You can’t stop a storm. You cannot cure prejudice.

 

Yes and no. It is true, there is no stopping a storm, but for all they are alike, these evils are not true storms. They are not irremediable. A child is not born full of wrath.

 

What is the cure for hatred?

 

Love.

 

Teach love, and you not only build shelters from these storms, you help prevent them. Teach empathy, teach kindness, teach acceptance and understanding, and you lessen the power and strength of the tornadoes that raze our society.

 

How do you prepare for these storms? You build love.


End file.
